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Hi Mona,
We don’t need to correct the corporeal ego. In corporeality, we need to arrange our lives in the normal way (of course without causing harm to anyone and without breaking any laws).
But our main focus is on the spiritual ego. This is what stands in the way of our connection with the Creator. Normally we don’t even feel the spiritual ego. It’s something we discover only after doing some serious spiritual work.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2010/10/true-evil/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Claudio,
Kabbalah is a science because it uses the basic scientific method to research reality. The Kabbalists are the scientists of Kabbalah. Everything we know is based on their research. This is similar to how other sciences work. The Kabbalists are those researchers that have performed a certain experiment and reached a certain result: the correction of our nature, the revelation of the Creator, the force of bestowal, etc. So if we are to replicate their experiment, to follow their procedures we should reach the same results.
But if a person is not yet on the degree of a Kabbalist, how does he relate to everything he’s learning? Like to any other science. For example, when I read a physics textbook, I see different formulas and experiments that research our reality. If I’m reading this textbook in 8th grade, then I have no choice but to accept the things written there since they come from a credible source. If I’m reading this textbook in college, I’m already given some tools with which I can measure and verify some of these things for myself. And yet there are some concepts that are so advanced, that I have no way to verify them until I become a physicist myself and get access to all the tools that will help me research these things.
Same with us here. There are some things I can verify for myself even when I’m just starting in the fundamentals of this wisdom, and then there are things that I can verify only when I myself have reached attainment.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2011/01/kabbalah-and-other-sciences-philosophy-and-religion/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Yelena,
If we aspire to return to a pleasant experience we have in the past, then we simply want to enjoy ourselves egoistically. But if we want spiritual growth, we do that by making more and more efforts in the current state. So our aspirations should always be towards making more efforts and not towards any pleasant results.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2009/12/head-toward-the-creator-and-dont-look-back/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Angel,
1. The whole Tanakh (what you would call the old testament) is a Kabbalistic text.
2. You can say it’s cryptic because it’s written in the language of roots and branches. This is a type of code that uses words of our world to describe spiritual phenomena.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2016/05/dispelling-myths-about-kabbalah-part-4/
3. Kabbalistic writings don’t talk about Jesus. So we could speculate one way or another whether he was a Kabbalist or not, but these would just be speculations. We should keep in mind that Kabbalah is a science. Kabbalah only deals with the correction of our egoistic nature and the revelation of the Creator. It has no connection to faith, religion, or religious leaders.
But ultimately these things are not so opposed. Both talk about the importance of loving others as yourself. Kabbalah goes even further and gives us a method to actualize loving others to such an extent that we can reveal in our lives the Creator, the general force of love and bestowal.
4. Egoism. A higher degree of egoism emerged which was impossible to deal with at that time because it required the participation of the whole world.
We see this in how Kabbalists describe the temple. The temple symbolized the level of love and connection that Kabbalists were able to achieve at that time. When a bigger level of egoism was revealed, they were unable to maintain that level of love and connection. As a result of that, the corporeal temple, the symbol of their love and connection, wound up getting destroyed.
Baal HaSulam writes about this in “Letter 60”, here’s an excerpt:
“this is what our sages meant when they asked about the ruin of the Second Temple, that there was no idolatry there and they were proficient in Torah, so why was it ruined? They said it was for unfounded hatred.”
Keep in mind that the growth of egoism is not a bad thing, but rather a sign of progress. It’s like with exercise, when you master a 5 pound weight, in order to keep progressing, you need to add resistance by going up to a 10 pound weight, etc. Likewise the process of correction works according to the rule of “from light to heavy”. Meaning first the lighter, less egoistic souls reach their correction. They become as the pioneers that start this whole process. And only later on we focus on the heavier, coarser, more egoistic desires.
The people in the days of Abraham were less egoistic and therefore started this whole process. After they corrected the egoism on their level, it opened the door for the rest of the world, the carriers of the heavier, more egoistic desires, to reach their correction.
But the rest of the world was not yet ready for this correction. For this reason Kabbalah had to be temporarily concealed and the people who previously succeeded in this method needed to be scattered throughout the whole world. Then in the process of them integrating with the rest of the world, they sped up the development of the rest of the world to this final state of correction.
So we can see from this whole process that it’s not that something bad happened, on the contrary, those pioneers that started this process finished the correction on their level and then received their next challenge.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2008/08/building-the-third-temple/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Angel,
There is only one Creator. Our job is to become similar to His qualities of bestowal to such an extent that we’ll reach adhesion with Him.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2019/04/the-purpose-of-creation/
Albert @ KabU
Hi Mona,
We learn from the Kabbalists that every single moment comes to us directly from the Creator, this is called “there is none else besides Him”. Furthermore, they also say that He is the “good that does good”. Meaning that every moment He is sending us nothing but goodness. But why then don’t we see this in our world? Why do we see so much suffering and problems in the world?
This is because our world is governed by our egoistic nature. This egoistic nature is opposite to the Creator’s nature. Because of that, it inverts the Creator’s goodness into something bad. It’s just like multiplying numbers: a positive times a negative equals negative.
So as long as we remain within this egoistic nature, we will continue to see and feel more suffering and bad things in the world. But if we correct our nature to be similar to the Creator’s nature, then we will reveal the true reality in which only goodness exists, and our previous egoistic state would appear as nothing more than a dream.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2011/06/how-can-we-justify-the-creator/
As for practically how we do this in our day to day life, externally we need to take care of all the problems in the usual way. If I’m sick, I go to the doctor, if someone wants to cause me harm, I turn to the police, etc.
But internally, we try to see how it’s all coming from a single benevolent force, and how these situations are an invitation from Him for us to correct ourselves through the Kabbalistic studies.
Check out this blog post from Rav Laitman for more details: https://laitman.com/2010/10/dont-ask-for-the-death-to-the-wicked/
Albert @ KabU
